Friday, September 30, 2016

Apologies for taking several days to write about Sunday's Panelbase poll - I'm still in southern Europe (not for much longer, alas!). The delay may be just as well, though, because it appears that the wrong numbers were originally reported. The definitive results are now available within the Panelbase datasets, and for my money the most important finding is on whether a second independence referendum should be held in the near future...

Want another independence referendum within three years : 53%

Do not want another independence referendum in the next few years : 47%

Regular readers might recall that I pulled YouGov up a few weeks ago for falsely claiming that one of their polls showed a majority were opposed to an independence referendum. In fact, they had only asked whether a referendum should be held before Brexit. The Panelbase poll helpfully demonstrates just how sensitive respondents are to the specifics of the question asked, because only 32% say they want a referendum while Brexit negotiations are ongoing, but a further 21% want a referendum in two or three years when negotiations have been completed - bringing us to a grand total of 53%. It's possible the three-option format of the question was helpful to the pro-referendum position (it arguably steers people towards subconsciously regarding the middle option of the three as the 'moderate' one). But nevertheless, if you confront people with a time-frame of just THREE YEARS, and a majority still say they want a referendum, it is clearly nonsensical to claim (as YouGov attempted to) that Scotland is opposed to Indyref 2.